Thomas A. Edison
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Thomas A. Edison
Month: April 2022
Linda Pastan
Now each finger adds its measure;you are pulled down by the weightof your own hair.And if your life should disappear ahead of youyou would not run after it. — Linda Pastan, from “Pain,” Waiting for My Life: Poems. (W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition March 1981)
C.S. Lewis
There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind. — C.S. Lewis
Miguel Hernández
Since this useless grief of minelikes the taste of rain, snail shells,the organs of the body,I’ll go ahead and feed your heart to the disheartened poppies.Grief bunches up between my ribs,each breath I take is painful. The hard slap of a hand, an icy fist,that violent, that fatal, unseenblow of an ax has cut you… Continue reading Miguel Hernández
Socrates
Be as you wish to seem. — Socrates 469 BC – 399 BC
Tsangyang Gyatso
Drawing diagrams I measuredMovements of the stars;Though her tender flesh is nearHer mind I cannot measure. —Tsangyang Gyatso, The Turquoise Bee: The Tantric Lovesongs of the Sixth Dalai Lama. (Harpercollins; 1st edition March 1994)
Akira Kurosawa
I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time. — Akira Kurosawa, Iriku/To Live. (1952)
Mary Ann Samyn
the poem’s tall grassesbrushing your bare limbs –can you feel that? And the scent of wisteria –is it on your hands now? — Mary Ann Samyn, “Entering the Text,” Inside the Yellow Dress. (New Issues Poetry & Prose; 1st edition January 1, 2001)
Charles Baudelaire
I am an old boudoir full of withered roses. — Charles Baudelaire, from “Spleen,” Fleurs de Mal/The Flowers of Evil. Translated by William Aggeler. (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
Ted Kooser
She’d had little patience with darkness, and her heartheld only a measure of shadow. I touchedthe warm dust of those colors, her tools,and left there with light on the tips of my fingers. ― Ted Kooser, from “A Box of Pastels,,” Delights and Shadows. (Copper Canyon Press; 1st edition May 1, 2004)
The Vale of Soul-Making 